I think I'll pass. One of the reasons I'm still on tildes is that it doesn't go for the "free speech" angle. Existing sites with that in mind have had, well, less than appealing communities, like...
I think I'll pass. One of the reasons I'm still on tildes is that it doesn't go for the "free speech" angle. Existing sites with that in mind have had, well, less than appealing communities, like voat and 8chan. For me, personally, I do want my platform to moderate content. I don't want some types of content to exist.
I've never really had a problem with reddit "censorship" or whatever, most of the poor moderation was just incompetence + poor coordinate + poor rules + occasional power tripping, but I mean it is a unpaid job with zero reward.
A forum filled with trolling, harassment, hate speech, incitement to violence and ideological proselytizing is not free speech any more than a sewer pipe is free water. A physical community...
Exemplary
A forum filled with trolling, harassment, hate speech, incitement to violence and ideological proselytizing is not free speech any more than a sewer pipe is free water.
A physical community without reasonable laws and the ability to enforce the laws quickly descends into tribalism, corruption, banditry and warlords. That's not freedom, it's the opposite of freedom.
It's counter-intuitive, but genuine freedom of expression online probably requires more rules, more moderation and more control after it grows beyond a certain size.
Much of the "free speech" rhetoric is just campaigning to tear down the few guardrails we have, so they can spread vile, violent, false and manipulative ideas and recruit for their cause.
Every time I hear proposals like Peterson's the first thought that comes to mind is "I wonder if these people understand the concept of Tragedy of the Commons". Because so often it seems like they...
Every time I hear proposals like Peterson's the first thought that comes to mind is "I wonder if these people understand the concept of Tragedy of the Commons". Because so often it seems like they either willingly ignore it or just flat-out do not think it a thing.
It's not even just the tragedy of the commons, it also has to do with selection bias as well. People that are seeking out a platform that deliberately advertises not ever banning anyone are going...
It's not even just the tragedy of the commons, it also has to do with selection bias as well. People that are seeking out a platform that deliberately advertises not ever banning anyone are going to post content that would get them banned anywhere else, because that's literally this platform's single differentiator. That means that the entire site will just be filled with the most low IQ, poorly thought out, racist, sexist, and generally vile content that people can come up with, since it wouldn't fly anywhere else.
For a useful working example, check out voat some time.
It's worse than 4chan in my opinion. I've been going to 4chan for about 15 years now. It's always been a virtually anything goes free for all shithole, but some of the specialty boards are usually...
It's worse than 4chan in my opinion. I've been going to 4chan for about 15 years now. It's always been a virtually anything goes free for all shithole, but some of the specialty boards are usually at least somewhat cordial. Granted, it got much worse during the 2016 election when /pol/ became one of the alt-right's headquarters and they slowly started infecting the rest of the site, but there's still reasonable discussion to be had sometimes, and most other boards can't stand people from /pol/ derailing conversations. 4chan already had its own unique culture. People generally don't go there solely because it's a free speech bastion, even though it kind of is.
Voat, however, was created as a deliberate reaction towards "CENSORSHIP ON DA INTERNET", so the kinds of people that seek it out are the ones who have repeatedly been banned on other platforms. Predictably, the people who post there are the most extreme, asinine, and grating people on the internet, because they've been banned everywhere else.
Yeah I really meant /b/ I spend a lot of time on /tg/ because once you get past the casual homophobia and racism, it's got some good ideas for RPG stuff.
Yeah I really meant /b/
I spend a lot of time on /tg/ because once you get past the casual homophobia and racism, it's got some good ideas for RPG stuff.
That's funny, /tg/ is pretty much the only board I frequent as well for the reasons you outlined. I still haven't found a better place for discussion of RPGs.
That's funny, /tg/ is pretty much the only board I frequent as well for the reasons you outlined. I still haven't found a better place for discussion of RPGs.
People who want to create a new forum concept seem uniquely blind to the history of these social experiments. They always charge in like this with their first impulse, which is typically to defend...
People who want to create a new forum concept seem uniquely blind to the history of these social experiments. They always charge in like this with their first impulse, which is typically to defend free speech at all costs. If they took even one fucking hour to read about how that idea plays out in practice every single time, they'd know they are charging blindly into a brick wall. Just one more silly bug on the windshield. :/
I like your analogies. It's basically anarchism: In theory, it's "absolute freedom". In reality, it's no-rules competition for power-hungry sociopaths.
A physical community without reasonable laws and the ability to enforce the laws quickly descends into tribalism, corruption, banditry and warlords. That's not freedom, it's the opposite of freedom.
I like your analogies. It's basically anarchism: In theory, it's "absolute freedom". In reality, it's no-rules competition for power-hungry sociopaths.
Don't forget stress from being overworked due to inadequate tools. IMO without Deimos' Automoderator reddit would have imploded ages ago, but even that is basically just a bandaid covering a...
most of the poor moderation was just ...
Don't forget stress from being overworked due to inadequate tools. IMO without Deimos' Automoderator reddit would have imploded ages ago, but even that is basically just a bandaid covering a festering wound at this point. It's one of the reasons I was (and still am) excited to see where Tildes goes and what he eventually develops here to help moderate the site, especially since he isn't hamstrung here like he was at reddit.
I used to moderate a moderate-size subreddit, and this was absolutely true. We required AutoModerator to function. If it went down, we would have been screwed. It did so many convenient things,...
IMO without Deimos' Automoderator reddit would have imploded ages ago
I used to moderate a moderate-size subreddit, and this was absolutely true. We required AutoModerator to function. If it went down, we would have been screwed. It did so many convenient things, like automatically reporting potentially rule-breaking comments (the big one), automatically removing the more egregious ones, automatically flairing posts, etc.
"Reddit's moderator tools used to suck. They still do, but they used to, too."
Though, according to the website, it at least..expects? thoughtful and respectful behavior. Which, I imagine, necessitates some form of moderation. Or...wishful thinking.
thinkspot is a collaborative community where individuals can explore and exchange ideas in a thoughtful and respectful manner. The platform is an intellectual playground for censorship-free discourse.
Though, according to the website, it at least..expects? thoughtful and respectful behavior. Which, I imagine, necessitates some form of moderation. Or...wishful thinking.
Think it's more wishful thinking. Their only rule is apparently a word limit, so the mods, if they even exist don't exactly have much to enforce. A 500 word rant about how the Jewish run the world...
Think it's more wishful thinking. Their only rule is apparently a word limit, so the mods, if they even exist don't exactly have much to enforce.
The only other major rule on comments he mentioned was that they need to be thoughtful. Rather than suggesting that some opinions are “off limits,” Peterson said they will have a minimum required length so one has to put thought into what they write.
A 500 word rant about how the Jewish run the world is certainly wordy, but I don't really want to read it.
Voat wasn't always like this. It was a lot like old school Reddit back in its early alpha days until all the racists that were driven away from Reddit started congregating on the dying platform....
Voat wasn't always like this. It was a lot like old school Reddit back in its early alpha days until all the racists that were driven away from Reddit started congregating on the dying platform. Voat is currently like the former racial hatred subreddits that were banned from Reddit, but spead across every subverse. You now can't look at any comments section on Voat without an excessive dose of racism, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism and homophobia. Some of these comments even advocate violence against Africans, Muslims, Jews, homosexuals, Hispanics and other groups.
Trying to argue and reason with these people results in you being mass downvoted and likely called multiple slurs. At least when Reddit was still a bastion of free speech, the voting system took care of such content by relegating shit comments to the bottom of the page. What Voat desperately needs are voices of reason, or more moderate users to balance out the crazies.
Voat has also swung itself too far in a free speech extreme to the point where they're almost powerless to deal with spammers and shitposters. There was one such poster who flooded v/gaming with lots of barely relevant lewd video game fan art, a lot of which was in a legal grey area. Yet his ban from the subverse actually led to a significant user backlash and his eventual unban.
I've never really had a problem with reddit "censorship" or whatever, most of the poor moderation was just incompetence + poor coordinate + poor rules + occasional power tripping, but I mean it is a unpaid job with zero reward.
I have major problems with it, having been unfairly banned from multiple subreddits in the past, having what I felt were rightful appeals being blindly ignored and modmail muted, and having the admins just shrug their shoulders when I raise power mod abuses to them and act like the mods can do whatever the fuck they want.
My problem with Reddit is more-so the sheer hypocrisy of the admins and their incredibly fake "laissez-faire" approach towards policing their own website.
The problem is inherent to a voluntary voting system: it's easily gamed. All it takes is a coordinated effort to defeat a voluntary vote system. Well-reasoned voices are rarely successful on...
The problem is inherent to a voluntary voting system: it's easily gamed. All it takes is a coordinated effort to defeat a voluntary vote system. Well-reasoned voices are rarely successful on reddit now, and it wasn't much better in its heyday. Popular votes always lend to popularity, not rationality (unless the userbase is entirely behind the concept of rationality at its core).
Free speech "bastions" are ripe for the coordinated takeover because they've immediately limited themselves to being powerless to do anything about it. That's why there has never once been an actual academic free speech proponent who didn't set limits on it.
apologies for the frankly awful fucking source here, but it appears to be the only place reporting on this so far and i simply cannot pass up the idea of sharing jordan peterson's idea of what...
apologies for the frankly awful fucking source here, but it appears to be the only place reporting on this so far and i simply cannot pass up the idea of sharing jordan peterson's idea of what good social media is, especially on here. i'll try to summarize the ideas here so you don't have to go to the original source on this one. thinkspot is apparently set to go live in the near future (its domain can be found here), and is currently in beta testing. peterson describes this service as radically pro-free speech and takes the 8chan line of “once you're on our platform we won't take you down unless we’re ordered to by a US court of law.”
there is apparently a minimum word limit being put into practice here, which will be the only other major rule of the site:
The only other major rule on comments he mentioned was that they need to be thoughtful. Rather than suggesting that some opinions are “off limits,” Peterson said they will have a minimum required length so one has to put thought into what they write.
“If minimum comment length is 50 words, you’re gonna have to put a little thought into it,” Peterson said. “Even if you’re being a troll, you’ll be a quasi-witty troll.”
it even has upvotes! and they do things!:
All comments on the website will have a voting feature “and if your ratio of upvotes to downvotes falls below 50/50 then your comments will be hidden, people will still be able to see them, if they click, but you'll disappear.” He later added a caveat saying that was still being mulled over and that “We don't know if 50/50 is right.”
it also intends to subsidize content creators, apparently, but we do not have details on how it'll do that yet. basically, peterson seems to be thinking a mixture of 8chan and services like gab here.
Won't have to be witty Won't have to be witty Won't have to be witty Won't have to be witty Won't have to be witty Won't have to be witty Won't have to be witty Won't have to be witty Won't have...
“If minimum comment length is 50 words, you’re gonna have to put a little thought into it,” Peterson said. “Even if you’re being a troll, you’ll be a quasi-witty troll.”
Won't have to be witty
Won't have to be witty
Won't have to be witty
Won't have to be witty
Won't have to be witty
Won't have to be witty
Won't have to be witty
Won't have to be witty
Won't have to be witty
Won't have to be witty
or
Won't have to be witty a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a
Repetition or meaningless filler to get past a minimum post size has such a long history on the internet I wonder how serious the endeavor is that hasn't thought of it.
Honestly, this is one of the few things votes should handle well. If people simply downvoted such a post (on platforms with downvotes, anyway), it would be hidden very quickly. Unfortunately, for...
Honestly, this is one of the few things votes should handle well. If people simply downvoted such a post (on platforms with downvotes, anyway), it would be hidden very quickly. Unfortunately, for some reason, people seem to only downvote things they disagree with and just blanket-upvote the rest.
probably because ultimately, upvotes and downvotes are easily turned into proxies for 'things i agree with on some level' and 'things i disagree with on some level' respectively--and on some...
Unfortunately, for some reason, people seem to only downvote things they disagree with and just blanket-upvote the rest.
probably because ultimately, upvotes and downvotes are easily turned into proxies for 'things i agree with on some level' and 'things i disagree with on some level' respectively--and on some dimension, that specific system of voting almost has to be that way by design[1] since when you upvote something in an upvote/downvote system you're expressing that on some level you agree with how that content jives with the community it's in, and when you downvote you're doing the opposite.
[1] there are probably exceptions, but i cannot name any alternative models of the upvote/downvote binary off the top of my head that also actually work well.
How are they expecting to fund it? Right now 8Chan is funded through sex books (among other things). If Sleeping Giants swatted advertisers from Breitbart, what makes them think they won't be...
How are they expecting to fund it? Right now 8Chan is funded through sex books (among other things). If Sleeping Giants swatted advertisers from Breitbart, what makes them think they won't be swatted from here?
I think they naively think it'll be like Reddit, when in reality it's just going to attract the filthiest of the filth, and nobody's going to want to be associated with that.
i'm guessing it'll also be through their vague "subscription-based service" based on the description? but again we don't seem to have details, and really how the fuck they're going to make that...
i'm guessing it'll also be through their vague "subscription-based service" based on the description? but again we don't seem to have details, and really how the fuck they're going to make that work is beyond me considering that almost none of these services ever make money.
I feel like, with good intentions, you can have a similar system (like torrent trackers already use just fine for themselves) to tracking a sort-of quasi-reputation, and acting on it. Not hide the...
I feel like, with good intentions, you can have a similar system (like torrent trackers already use just fine for themselves) to tracking a sort-of quasi-reputation, and acting on it.
Not hide the content, definitely, but place it downstream from the rest of the comments? Gray it out, or show it in reduced sizing. Something like Tildes' "noise" labeling.
Tildes probably won't be able to handle this kind of community-sourced filtering, but a more self-moderated place... might?
If your goal is to promote a single ideological agenda and indoctrinate like-minded people, this is how you'd design the site mechanics. You'd want to censor or suppress any idea that threatens...
If your goal is to promote a single ideological agenda and indoctrinate like-minded people, this is how you'd design the site mechanics.
You'd want to censor or suppress any idea that threatens the orthodoxy. Better yet, you'd give it a veneer of "democratic" legitimacy by using downvotes to disappear opinions that deviate from that orthodoxy.
But it's the opposite of freedom of speech when contrary perspectives are censored or hidden.
If your goal is to promote healthy discussion of a wide variety of perspectives, then you build different mechanisms to suppress trolling, harassment, abuse, off-topic comments and low-quality noise, while letting the discussion flow. The last thing you'd do is let people with a shared ideological agenda to hide content that challenges their agenda.
My experience is that, while using this system, the difference between an ideological trap and a self-sufficient, truly-"free speech" community is the intent behind it. I used to be on this forum...
My experience is that, while using this system, the difference between an ideological trap and a self-sufficient, truly-"free speech" community is the intent behind it.
I used to be on this forum called Hubski. It's fairly small, with a dozen or two (semi-)regulars and a whole bunch of people who visit every once in a while. One of the things that stand out immediately on Hubski is that there's no admin-centric moderation, per se. Users are given the tools to suppress other users' comments and posts from their view, "out of sight, out of mind"-way. Enough regulars muting you on Hubski effectively means taking your voice away as part of that community.
While it had led to its own share of conflicts, freak-outs, and misunderstandings, it's also led to a thriving little familial place on the Internet, where you're being told, with all honesty but also with the appropriate compassion, what you need to hear.
This experience is why I'm not that opposed to the Peterson's platform's system: in my eyes, it's the purpose and the intent behind it that shapes its use.
“Free Speech!*” *unless your speech runs afoul of the hive mind.
All comments on the website will have a voting feature “and if your ratio of upvotes to downvotes falls below 50/50 then your comments will be hidden, people will still be able to see them, if they click, but you'll disappear.” He later added a caveat saying that was still being mulled over and that “We don't know if 50/50 is right.”
Right. "We won't ever take you down, but you'll be invisible". I think promoting free speech on a platform is cynical enough, but if you're going to do it, at least be consistent
Right. "We won't ever take you down, but you'll be invisible". I think promoting free speech on a platform is cynical enough, but if you're going to do it, at least be consistent
On 4chan's /r9k/ board, if a post is deemed too unoriginal by the robot, people typically put some variation of "original" on it, e.g. "original post", "originally", "origanoli", "oregano", "fuck...
“If minimum comment length is 50 words, you’re gonna have to put a little thought into it,”
On 4chan's /r9k/ board, if a post is deemed too unoriginal by the robot, people typically put some variation of "original" on it, e.g. "original post", "originally", "origanoli", "oregano", "fuck the original bot", etc. This usually is enough to fool the robot. People will likely just rehash their posts on JP's website, add a lengthy TL;DR, or abuse whatever markdown is implemented (such as random words in link tags or superscripts).
I'm going with: 4. Moderately successful white-nationalist safe space. Peterson has a significant personality cult going, and I imagine many will be happy to pay the subscription fee to hang out...
Peterson has a significant personality cult going, and I imagine many will be happy to pay the subscription fee to hang out at his place. A subscription fee will make each user a lot more valuable than users of sites financed by advertisement or donations. The subscription fee will keep trolls away, but it will also keep liberals away, since few in their right mind would pay money to a political opponent just for the privilege of getting harassed.
Though there is some hope of:
5. Scrambling for alternative financing models after being blocked by every credit card company.
It's like what I've been thinking; enclaves in the style of Snow Crash are coming. There will be a home on the internet for all sorts of fucked up ideas and groups. The advantage they have over...
It's like what I've been thinking; enclaves in the style of Snow Crash are coming. There will be a home on the internet for all sorts of fucked up ideas and groups. The advantage they have over cults like Scientology and normal political parties is that they are low-cost and have no real-world assets to worry about. These are just ideas and bits transporting those ideas.
My bet is on Peterson using this to suck up more money for a while until the gravy train dries up and he declares the Postmodern Neomarxists have sabotaged the platform and it is being all but...
My bet is on Peterson using this to suck up more money for a while until the gravy train dries up and he declares the Postmodern Neomarxists have sabotaged the platform and it is being all but abandoned.
I get the impression that Jordan Peterson doesn't really understand how horrible websites with no speech regulation tend to be, so I'm looking forward to the hard lessons he'll learn from creating...
I get the impression that Jordan Peterson doesn't really understand how horrible websites with no speech regulation tend to be, so I'm looking forward to the hard lessons he'll learn from creating the next voat.
honestly, i'm not actually that convinced he doesn't know what he's getting himself into or that he doesn't want what will almost inevitably happen with this platform. peterson is not a nazi by...
honestly, i'm not actually that convinced he doesn't know what he's getting himself into or that he doesn't want what will almost inevitably happen with this platform. peterson is not a nazi by any stretch of the world (he's just a shithead with beliefs that the alt-right and their satellite groups identify with quite nicely) but he's bordering on a collaborator with them at times and seems to be pretty fine with coexisting in their spaces and being around them. if he learns any genuine lessons from what is probably going to occur, which i'd doubt, it'll probably have to come from the platform spawning a spree-killer or a terrorist.
No thanks, I'd prefer to not have anything to do with Jordan Peterson, a person who: Is opposed to extending discrimination protections to gender identity Thinks feminism is responsible for...
No thanks, I'd prefer to not have anything to do with Jordan Peterson, a person who:
Is opposed to extending discrimination protections to gender identity
Thinks feminism is responsible for destabilizing society
Doesn't believe in climate change
Claims everyone is religious, even if they explicitly refute it, because he thinks it's encoded in our DNA, and makes this claim repeatedly with zero proof
not likely to happen, alas. it's probable that such people will flock there and make it their main space because they won't get their accounts banned, but it's not like they're going to completely...
With any luck, all the mouth breathers will leave Reddit and head over to ThinkSpot.
not likely to happen, alas. it's probable that such people will flock there and make it their main space because they won't get their accounts banned, but it's not like they're going to completely abandon other social media in doing so. any person trying to push a radical ideology would be smart to have even a token presence on bigger platforms, because they can propagandize on those platforms to boatloads of people instead of proselytizing to people that already agree with them. this is why communities like T_D and the former /r/LeftWithSharpEdge don't exclusively go to websites like voat or raddle, even though they'd be far more likely to be able to express themselves as they actually want to on such platforms.
Basically it's a coordination safe space and they'll venture out to other forums to be shit-disturbers. Internet's entering a dark age and I guess society too? I remember when it was just cat...
Basically it's a coordination safe space and they'll venture out to other forums to be shit-disturbers.
Internet's entering a dark age and I guess society too? I remember when it was just cat videos and rick-rolling and Wikipedia and free/open source and creative commons and basically happy fun-times on the Internet. sigh
I wish I could think of a way to troll these trolls into being good people -- if the kinds of people we think will sign up for this end up signing up for it, then it'd be nice if decent people...
I wish I could think of a way to troll these trolls into being good people -- if the kinds of people we think will sign up for this end up signing up for it, then it'd be nice if decent people could go on there and start commenting things about being decent and troll them back to being okay human beings.
It looks like it'll be subscription based, which means that most users will be devoted bigots like him. You'll have to pay for the right to troll or create controversy. A 50 words minimum for...
It looks like it'll be subscription based, which means that most users will be devoted bigots like him. You'll have to pay for the right to troll or create controversy.
A 50 words minimum for posting is a good way to not have many posts at all.
Naming a social network Thinkspot may indicate naiveness and projected arrogance regarding his potential audience. I don't think there will be much thinking there.
thinkspot is a collaborative community where individuals can explore and exchange ideas in a thoughtful and respectful manner. The platform is an intellectual playground for censorship-free discourse.
This is contradictory. How is he supposed to ensure a respectful exchange of ideas without regulation? Exactly what definition of "censorship-free" is he using here? Let's say I choose to only write in Klingon or Dothraki. I'm obviously not exchanging any ideas. Will my posts be deleted? Is that censorship? And what if I'm neither thoughtful nor respectful? Why is the removal of my content not censorship?
If you write in Klingon, or if you challenge the dogma that postmodern Marxism is hell bent on destroying Western capitalism and Judeo-Christian values by infecting corporate HR departments with...
If you write in Klingon, or if you challenge the dogma that postmodern Marxism is hell bent on destroying Western capitalism and Judeo-Christian values by infecting corporate HR departments with Stalinist feminism, then your posts will get more downvotes than upvotes, and they'll disappear into oblivion.
This is the opposite of free speech.
It's curious that JP and company claim to need a special platform to spread their malarkey. Even though it's senseless, it wouldn't get banned from any existing platform. It's not a pleasant experience, though, as it's difficult to silence criticism on existing platforms.
So maybe it's not really free speech they're after. Maybe it's the opposite of free speech that they want. Maybe they're building a machine to amplify extremism by silencing contrary views.
Would people here be willing to accept this place if it became what Peterson have in mind? If it became a true place to say whatever you want surprisingly well-behaved , thoughtful, interesting,...
Would people here be willing to accept this place if it became what Peterson have in mind? If it became a true place to say whatever you want surprisingly well-behaved , thoughtful, interesting, original and mind expanding?
I can pretty much say whatever I want here and on just about any other social media platform. The only real guardrails in most places are around erotic content. Even Nazi crap has a surprising...
I can pretty much say whatever I want here and on just about any other social media platform. The only real guardrails in most places are around erotic content. Even Nazi crap has a surprising amount of leeway. That people can’t seem to air their opinions out without getting banned everywhere they go suggests the opinions they’re trying to air out are truly vile and noxious.
Noxious atmospheres aren’t actually free places to “say whatever you want.” They’re places where the power structures in place encourage bullying and hostility towards out groups. They don’t encourage “mind-expanding.” It’s constraining.
These kind of comments are why I spend less time on reddit so I'm a little disappointed how an unannounced comment like this gets so much praise. I'm not a big fan of Peterson but It's not that...
These kind of comments are why I spend less time on reddit so I'm a little disappointed how an unannounced comment like this gets so much praise. I'm not a big fan of Peterson but It's not that black and white.
Voat, Gab, Dissenter, 8chan (and many similar image boards), WrongThink, PewTube, Parler. Can you name any absolutist free speech, censorship free, social media sites that didn't/haven't become a...
but It's not that black and white.
Voat, Gab, Dissenter, 8chan (and many similar image boards), WrongThink, PewTube, Parler. Can you name any absolutist free speech, censorship free, social media sites that didn't/haven't become a hotbed of bigoted, hateful and violent rhetoric? I'm genuinely curious if there are any, because there are none that I am aware of.
I can't so maybe the skepticism is somewhat fair. I just don't like how everything is shot down immediately just because people don't like the messenger and they think they know 100% how it's...
I can't so maybe the skepticism is somewhat fair. I just don't like how everything is shot down immediately just because people don't like the messenger and they think they know 100% how it's going to turn out. This might not be the place that will bring different opinions closer together but completely writing it off from the beginning just furthers stalemate.
I agree that the 100% certainty being expressed might be a bit much and I can see how you would be annoyed with it... but honestly, I myself am incredibly skeptical it's even possible to be an...
I agree that the 100% certainty being expressed might be a bit much and I can see how you would be annoyed with it... but honestly, I myself am incredibly skeptical it's even possible to be an absolutist free speech, censorship free site without it inevitably being populated by only the worst people. Nice people don't want to associate with or be around assholes, and the nicer the person is the lower their tolerance for assholes usually is.
we have a pretty big sample size of websites at this point and realistically, the only way i can see it working is with an extensive curation of who gets in to begin with. but really, at that...
but honestly, I myself am incredibly skeptical it's even possible to be an absolutist free speech, censorship free site without it inevitably being populated by only the worst people.
we have a pretty big sample size of websites at this point and realistically, the only way i can see it working is with an extensive curation of who gets in to begin with. but really, at that point you might as well not have the absolutist free speech position in the first place because if you select purely for people who are not going be giant shitheads or literal nazis, you're really not going to have a need for an absolutist free speech position. people will be well within the guardrails.
Yes but prior experiences tell me a lack of moderation or rules kind of precludes that possibility. So I'm sceptic leaning to negative until they prove themselves.
Yes but prior experiences tell me a lack of moderation or rules kind of precludes that possibility. So I'm sceptic leaning to negative until they prove themselves.
I completely agree and these are my thoughts too. It could be interesting but experience tell me it could easily become nothing more than a glorified 4chan/8chan.
I completely agree and these are my thoughts too. It could be interesting but experience tell me it could easily become nothing more than a glorified 4chan/8chan.
In my opinion there is very little difference between a polite nazi and an unpolite one. I really couldn't care less if discussion on the platform is "well-behaved" if the community is made up...
In my opinion there is very little difference between a polite nazi and an unpolite one. I really couldn't care less if discussion on the platform is "well-behaved" if the community is made up almost entirely of scum like white nationalists and fascists, and I see almost no scenario in which groups like that don't flock to Peterson's site in droves.
Yes I would. I would like nothing more than a place to get to the bottom of modern US conservative positions via thoughtful, fact supported conversation. If that is the goal of the platform then I...
Yes I would. I would like nothing more than a place to get to the bottom of modern US conservative positions via thoughtful, fact supported conversation. If that is the goal of the platform then I wish them the best of luck.
Here's the thing. Freedom of speech isn't meant to protect normal speech. It's for offensive and unpopular speech. I think it's an important freedom for a government to recognize, for the general...
Here's the thing. Freedom of speech isn't meant to protect normal speech. It's for offensive and unpopular speech. I think it's an important freedom for a government to recognize, for the general health of society. Mainly because governments don't have a great track record when it comes to mediating what speech to allow.
But we're not talking about governments, we're talking about private websites. Assuming American jurisdiction for a moment, the 1st Amendment, which says "Congress shall make no law..." doesn't apply in this situation. If I wanted to make a social network restricting all users' posts to the word "buffalo" that's my prerogative.
There are plenty of places online for normal speech. If a site is created with free speech as its core principle and selling point, it's not going to attract people away from their existing communities for normal speech... it's going to attract the other kind. The offensive and unpopular speech, almost exclusively. This is how echo chambers are born. No matter how offensive or unpopular the stuff a person might want to say is, I'd hope they would at least recognize that's not a good recipe for building a healthy community.
I often see this said, but which governments? Any modern Western ones? Because Canada has had hate speech laws on the books since 1970 and IMO our government (and more importantly, our Judiciary)...
Mainly because governments don't have a great track record when it comes to mediating what speech to allow.
I often see this said, but which governments? Any modern Western ones? Because Canada has had hate speech laws on the books since 1970 and IMO our government (and more importantly, our Judiciary) has since done a fine job of upholding those established standards for unacceptable speech while still otherwise respecting our right to free expression, prosecuting offenders reasonably, and not overreaching with them. And I am pretty sure most reasonable people familiar with European hate speech laws would probably say similar.
Not OP. There are plenty of examples in the U.S. with the most prolific example being local school boards deciding that Huck Finn is racist or some other classic isn't racist enough. But perhaps...
Not OP. There are plenty of examples in the U.S. with the most prolific example being local school boards deciding that Huck Finn is racist or some other classic isn't racist enough. But perhaps you're thinking Federal government and if so then there is a pretty good example where Larry Flynt's pornographic magazine Hustler had to take their case all the way to the Supreme Court. Then there are less specific examples during WWII and with Japanese internment camps ("freedom to assemble") and going back further we have the Alien and Sedition Act of 1798 which criminalized making false statements about the government.
None of those examples really have anything to do with what Jordan Peterson and his ilk call "free speech" which is a lot more to do about making their voices heard above others and less about what they can/cannot say.
The free market at work, eh? If a baker won't sell to you, find a different baker, and all that... I figured it'd at least be an American that figured out how to profit from the alt-right's speech...
The free market at work, eh? If a baker won't sell to you, find a different baker, and all that... I figured it'd at least be an American that figured out how to profit from the alt-right's speech "suppression."
I think I'll pass. One of the reasons I'm still on tildes is that it doesn't go for the "free speech" angle. Existing sites with that in mind have had, well, less than appealing communities, like voat and 8chan. For me, personally, I do want my platform to moderate content. I don't want some types of content to exist.
I've never really had a problem with reddit "censorship" or whatever, most of the poor moderation was just incompetence + poor coordinate + poor rules + occasional power tripping, but I mean it is a unpaid job with zero reward.
A forum filled with trolling, harassment, hate speech, incitement to violence and ideological proselytizing is not free speech any more than a sewer pipe is free water.
A physical community without reasonable laws and the ability to enforce the laws quickly descends into tribalism, corruption, banditry and warlords. That's not freedom, it's the opposite of freedom.
It's counter-intuitive, but genuine freedom of expression online probably requires more rules, more moderation and more control after it grows beyond a certain size.
Much of the "free speech" rhetoric is just campaigning to tear down the few guardrails we have, so they can spread vile, violent, false and manipulative ideas and recruit for their cause.
Every time I hear proposals like Peterson's the first thought that comes to mind is "I wonder if these people understand the concept of Tragedy of the Commons". Because so often it seems like they either willingly ignore it or just flat-out do not think it a thing.
It's not even just the tragedy of the commons, it also has to do with selection bias as well. People that are seeking out a platform that deliberately advertises not ever banning anyone are going to post content that would get them banned anywhere else, because that's literally this platform's single differentiator. That means that the entire site will just be filled with the most low IQ, poorly thought out, racist, sexist, and generally vile content that people can come up with, since it wouldn't fly anywhere else.
For a useful working example, check out voat some time.
Oh man, before I found tildes I checked voat out briefly... If I wanted rampant toxicity I'd go to 4chan...
It's worse than 4chan in my opinion. I've been going to 4chan for about 15 years now. It's always been a virtually anything goes free for all shithole, but some of the specialty boards are usually at least somewhat cordial. Granted, it got much worse during the 2016 election when /pol/ became one of the alt-right's headquarters and they slowly started infecting the rest of the site, but there's still reasonable discussion to be had sometimes, and most other boards can't stand people from /pol/ derailing conversations. 4chan already had its own unique culture. People generally don't go there solely because it's a free speech bastion, even though it kind of is.
Voat, however, was created as a deliberate reaction towards "CENSORSHIP ON DA INTERNET", so the kinds of people that seek it out are the ones who have repeatedly been banned on other platforms. Predictably, the people who post there are the most extreme, asinine, and grating people on the internet, because they've been banned everywhere else.
Yeah I really meant /b/
I spend a lot of time on /tg/ because once you get past the casual homophobia and racism, it's got some good ideas for RPG stuff.
That's funny, /tg/ is pretty much the only board I frequent as well for the reasons you outlined. I still haven't found a better place for discussion of RPGs.
People who want to create a new forum concept seem uniquely blind to the history of these social experiments. They always charge in like this with their first impulse, which is typically to defend free speech at all costs. If they took even one fucking hour to read about how that idea plays out in practice every single time, they'd know they are charging blindly into a brick wall. Just one more silly bug on the windshield. :/
I like your analogies. It's basically anarchism: In theory, it's "absolute freedom". In reality, it's no-rules competition for power-hungry sociopaths.
Don't forget stress from being overworked due to inadequate tools. IMO without Deimos' Automoderator reddit would have imploded ages ago, but even that is basically just a bandaid covering a festering wound at this point. It's one of the reasons I was (and still am) excited to see where Tildes goes and what he eventually develops here to help moderate the site, especially since he isn't hamstrung here like he was at reddit.
I used to moderate a moderate-size subreddit, and this was absolutely true. We required AutoModerator to function. If it went down, we would have been screwed. It did so many convenient things, like automatically reporting potentially rule-breaking comments (the big one), automatically removing the more egregious ones, automatically flairing posts, etc.
"Reddit's moderator tools used to suck. They still do, but they used to, too."
Though, according to the website, it at least..expects? thoughtful and respectful behavior. Which, I imagine, necessitates some form of moderation. Or...wishful thinking.
Think it's more wishful thinking. Their only rule is apparently a word limit, so the mods, if they even exist don't exactly have much to enforce.
A 500 word rant about how the Jewish run the world is certainly wordy, but I don't really want to read it.
Using verbosity as a proxy for thoughtfulness is the most Jordan Petersony thing ever hahaha
Voat wasn't always like this. It was a lot like old school Reddit back in its early alpha days until all the racists that were driven away from Reddit started congregating on the dying platform. Voat is currently like the former racial hatred subreddits that were banned from Reddit, but spead across every subverse. You now can't look at any comments section on Voat without an excessive dose of racism, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism and homophobia. Some of these comments even advocate violence against Africans, Muslims, Jews, homosexuals, Hispanics and other groups.
Trying to argue and reason with these people results in you being mass downvoted and likely called multiple slurs. At least when Reddit was still a bastion of free speech, the voting system took care of such content by relegating shit comments to the bottom of the page. What Voat desperately needs are voices of reason, or more moderate users to balance out the crazies.
Voat has also swung itself too far in a free speech extreme to the point where they're almost powerless to deal with spammers and shitposters. There was one such poster who flooded v/gaming with lots of barely relevant lewd video game fan art, a lot of which was in a legal grey area. Yet his ban from the subverse actually led to a significant user backlash and his eventual unban.
I have major problems with it, having been unfairly banned from multiple subreddits in the past, having what I felt were rightful appeals being blindly ignored and modmail muted, and having the admins just shrug their shoulders when I raise power mod abuses to them and act like the mods can do whatever the fuck they want.
My problem with Reddit is more-so the sheer hypocrisy of the admins and their incredibly fake "laissez-faire" approach towards policing their own website.
The problem is inherent to a voluntary voting system: it's easily gamed. All it takes is a coordinated effort to defeat a voluntary vote system. Well-reasoned voices are rarely successful on reddit now, and it wasn't much better in its heyday. Popular votes always lend to popularity, not rationality (unless the userbase is entirely behind the concept of rationality at its core).
Free speech "bastions" are ripe for the coordinated takeover because they've immediately limited themselves to being powerless to do anything about it. That's why there has never once been an actual academic free speech proponent who didn't set limits on it.
apologies for the frankly awful fucking source here, but it appears to be the only place reporting on this so far and i simply cannot pass up the idea of sharing jordan peterson's idea of what good social media is, especially on here. i'll try to summarize the ideas here so you don't have to go to the original source on this one. thinkspot is apparently set to go live in the near future (its domain can be found here), and is currently in beta testing. peterson describes this service as radically pro-free speech and takes the 8chan line of “once you're on our platform we won't take you down unless we’re ordered to by a US court of law.”
there is apparently a minimum word limit being put into practice here, which will be the only other major rule of the site:
it even has upvotes! and they do things!:
it also intends to subsidize content creators, apparently, but we do not have details on how it'll do that yet. basically, peterson seems to be thinking a mixture of 8chan and services like gab here.
or
Repetition or meaningless filler to get past a minimum post size has such a long history on the internet I wonder how serious the endeavor is that hasn't thought of it.
The zero-width space character may be finding some new use.
Honestly, this is one of the few things votes should handle well. If people simply downvoted such a post (on platforms with downvotes, anyway), it would be hidden very quickly. Unfortunately, for some reason, people seem to only downvote things they disagree with and just blanket-upvote the rest.
probably because ultimately, upvotes and downvotes are easily turned into proxies for 'things i agree with on some level' and 'things i disagree with on some level' respectively--and on some dimension, that specific system of voting almost has to be that way by design[1] since when you upvote something in an upvote/downvote system you're expressing that on some level you agree with how that content jives with the community it's in, and when you downvote you're doing the opposite.
[1] there are probably exceptions, but i cannot name any alternative models of the upvote/downvote binary off the top of my head that also actually work well.
That's what happens when you live in an ivory tower; Peterson should get out of his basement sometime and interact with people.
How are they expecting to fund it? Right now 8Chan is funded through sex books (among other things). If Sleeping Giants swatted advertisers from Breitbart, what makes them think they won't be swatted from here?
I think they naively think it'll be like Reddit, when in reality it's just going to attract the filthiest of the filth, and nobody's going to want to be associated with that.
i'm guessing it'll also be through their vague "subscription-based service" based on the description? but again we don't seem to have details, and really how the fuck they're going to make that work is beyond me considering that almost none of these services ever make money.
A hive mind filter bubble on an industrial scale.
I feel like, with good intentions, you can have a similar system (like torrent trackers already use just fine for themselves) to tracking a sort-of quasi-reputation, and acting on it.
Not hide the content, definitely, but place it downstream from the rest of the comments? Gray it out, or show it in reduced sizing. Something like Tildes' "noise" labeling.
Tildes probably won't be able to handle this kind of community-sourced filtering, but a more self-moderated place... might?
If your goal is to promote a single ideological agenda and indoctrinate like-minded people, this is how you'd design the site mechanics.
You'd want to censor or suppress any idea that threatens the orthodoxy. Better yet, you'd give it a veneer of "democratic" legitimacy by using downvotes to disappear opinions that deviate from that orthodoxy.
But it's the opposite of freedom of speech when contrary perspectives are censored or hidden.
If your goal is to promote healthy discussion of a wide variety of perspectives, then you build different mechanisms to suppress trolling, harassment, abuse, off-topic comments and low-quality noise, while letting the discussion flow. The last thing you'd do is let people with a shared ideological agenda to hide content that challenges their agenda.
My experience is that, while using this system, the difference between an ideological trap and a self-sufficient, truly-"free speech" community is the intent behind it.
I used to be on this forum called Hubski. It's fairly small, with a dozen or two (semi-)regulars and a whole bunch of people who visit every once in a while. One of the things that stand out immediately on Hubski is that there's no admin-centric moderation, per se. Users are given the tools to suppress other users' comments and posts from their view, "out of sight, out of mind"-way. Enough regulars muting you on Hubski effectively means taking your voice away as part of that community.
While it had led to its own share of conflicts, freak-outs, and misunderstandings, it's also led to a thriving little familial place on the Internet, where you're being told, with all honesty but also with the appropriate compassion, what you need to hear.
This experience is why I'm not that opposed to the Peterson's platform's system: in my eyes, it's the purpose and the intent behind it that shapes its use.
“Free Speech!*”
*unless your speech runs afoul of the hive mind.
Right. "We won't ever take you down, but you'll be invisible". I think promoting free speech on a platform is cynical enough, but if you're going to do it, at least be consistent
On 4chan's /r9k/ board, if a post is deemed too unoriginal by the robot, people typically put some variation of "original" on it, e.g. "original post", "originally", "origanoli", "oregano", "fuck the original bot", etc. This usually is enough to fool the robot. People will likely just rehash their posts on JP's website, add a lengthy TL;DR, or abuse whatever markdown is implemented (such as random words in link tags or superscripts).
I'm going with:
4. Moderately successful white-nationalist safe space.
Peterson has a significant personality cult going, and I imagine many will be happy to pay the subscription fee to hang out at his place. A subscription fee will make each user a lot more valuable than users of sites financed by advertisement or donations. The subscription fee will keep trolls away, but it will also keep liberals away, since few in their right mind would pay money to a political opponent just for the privilege of getting harassed.
Though there is some hope of:
5. Scrambling for alternative financing models after being blocked by every credit card company.
It's like what I've been thinking; enclaves in the style of Snow Crash are coming. There will be a home on the internet for all sorts of fucked up ideas and groups. The advantage they have over cults like Scientology and normal political parties is that they are low-cost and have no real-world assets to worry about. These are just ideas and bits transporting those ideas.
My bet is on Peterson using this to suck up more money for a while until the gravy train dries up and he declares the Postmodern Neomarxists have sabotaged the platform and it is being all but abandoned.
I registered for the beta. I kinda want to see this crash and burn in first person, lol.
I get the impression that Jordan Peterson doesn't really understand how horrible websites with no speech regulation tend to be, so I'm looking forward to the hard lessons he'll learn from creating the next voat.
honestly, i'm not actually that convinced he doesn't know what he's getting himself into or that he doesn't want what will almost inevitably happen with this platform. peterson is not a nazi by any stretch of the world (he's just a shithead with beliefs that the alt-right and their satellite groups identify with quite nicely) but he's bordering on a collaborator with them at times and seems to be pretty fine with coexisting in their spaces and being around them. if he learns any genuine lessons from what is probably going to occur, which i'd doubt, it'll probably have to come from the platform spawning a spree-killer or a terrorist.
He already has Carlgon of Benjamin on boardz I'm sure he's ready.
No thanks, I'd prefer to not have anything to do with Jordan Peterson, a person who:
other websites like New York Magazine are finally picking up the beat here, so for those of you with an objection to the awful source, here you go.
not likely to happen, alas. it's probable that such people will flock there and make it their main space because they won't get their accounts banned, but it's not like they're going to completely abandon other social media in doing so. any person trying to push a radical ideology would be smart to have even a token presence on bigger platforms, because they can propagandize on those platforms to boatloads of people instead of proselytizing to people that already agree with them. this is why communities like T_D and the former /r/LeftWithSharpEdge don't exclusively go to websites like voat or raddle, even though they'd be far more likely to be able to express themselves as they actually want to on such platforms.
Basically it's a coordination safe space and they'll venture out to other forums to be shit-disturbers.
Internet's entering a dark age and I guess society too? I remember when it was just cat videos and rick-rolling and Wikipedia and free/open source and creative commons and basically happy fun-times on the Internet. sigh
I wish I could think of a way to troll these trolls into being good people -- if the kinds of people we think will sign up for this end up signing up for it, then it'd be nice if decent people could go on there and start commenting things about being decent and troll them back to being okay human beings.
In the olden times SomethingAwful would have had a field day goonswarming this.
It looks like it'll be subscription based, which means that most users will be devoted bigots like him. You'll have to pay for the right to troll or create controversy.
A 50 words minimum for posting is a good way to not have many posts at all.
Naming a social network
Thinkspotmay indicate naiveness and projected arrogance regarding his potential audience. I don't think there will be much thinking there.From the website:
This is contradictory. How is he supposed to ensure a respectful exchange of ideas without regulation? Exactly what definition of "censorship-free" is he using here? Let's say I choose to only write in Klingon or Dothraki. I'm obviously not exchanging any ideas. Will my posts be deleted? Is that censorship? And what if I'm neither thoughtful nor respectful? Why is the removal of my content not censorship?
If you write in Klingon, or if you challenge the dogma that postmodern Marxism is hell bent on destroying Western capitalism and Judeo-Christian values by infecting corporate HR departments with Stalinist feminism, then your posts will get more downvotes than upvotes, and they'll disappear into oblivion.
This is the opposite of free speech.
It's curious that JP and company claim to need a special platform to spread their malarkey. Even though it's senseless, it wouldn't get banned from any existing platform. It's not a pleasant experience, though, as it's difficult to silence criticism on existing platforms.
So maybe it's not really free speech they're after. Maybe it's the opposite of free speech that they want. Maybe they're building a machine to amplify extremism by silencing contrary views.
That's such an absurd concept! Marxism is so structuralist it hurts lol.
Would people here be willing to accept this place if it became what Peterson have in mind? If it became a true place to say whatever you want surprisingly well-behaved , thoughtful, interesting, original and mind expanding?
I can pretty much say whatever I want here and on just about any other social media platform. The only real guardrails in most places are around erotic content. Even Nazi crap has a surprising amount of leeway. That people can’t seem to air their opinions out without getting banned everywhere they go suggests the opinions they’re trying to air out are truly vile and noxious.
Noxious atmospheres aren’t actually free places to “say whatever you want.” They’re places where the power structures in place encourage bullying and hostility towards out groups. They don’t encourage “mind-expanding.” It’s constraining.
There are plenty of forums to have thoughtful discussion (including here). What Peterson is proposing is a white nationalist safe space.
These kind of comments are why I spend less time on reddit so I'm a little disappointed how an unannounced comment like this gets so much praise. I'm not a big fan of Peterson but It's not that black and white.
Voat, Gab, Dissenter, 8chan (and many similar image boards), WrongThink, PewTube, Parler. Can you name any absolutist free speech, censorship free, social media sites that didn't/haven't become a hotbed of bigoted, hateful and violent rhetoric? I'm genuinely curious if there are any, because there are none that I am aware of.
I can't so maybe the skepticism is somewhat fair. I just don't like how everything is shot down immediately just because people don't like the messenger and they think they know 100% how it's going to turn out. This might not be the place that will bring different opinions closer together but completely writing it off from the beginning just furthers stalemate.
I agree that the 100% certainty being expressed might be a bit much and I can see how you would be annoyed with it... but honestly, I myself am incredibly skeptical it's even possible to be an absolutist free speech, censorship free site without it inevitably being populated by only the worst people. Nice people don't want to associate with or be around assholes, and the nicer the person is the lower their tolerance for assholes usually is.
See:
http://anildash.com/2011/07/20/if_your_websites_full_of_assholes_its_your_fault-2/
https://tildes.net/~talk/cjn/in_my_opinion_censorship_is_a_bad_way_to_combat_hate_speech#comment-32ks
we have a pretty big sample size of websites at this point and realistically, the only way i can see it working is with an extensive curation of who gets in to begin with. but really, at that point you might as well not have the absolutist free speech position in the first place because if you select purely for people who are not going be giant shitheads or literal nazis, you're really not going to have a need for an absolutist free speech position. people will be well within the guardrails.
Yeah I see it...stop making sense! :)
I think I was more focused on the lack of openness to ideas from opposing views than the free speech thing.
Yes but prior experiences tell me a lack of moderation or rules kind of precludes that possibility. So I'm sceptic leaning to negative until they prove themselves.
I completely agree and these are my thoughts too. It could be interesting but experience tell me it could easily become nothing more than a glorified 4chan/8chan.
In my opinion there is very little difference between a polite nazi and an unpolite one. I really couldn't care less if discussion on the platform is "well-behaved" if the community is made up almost entirely of scum like white nationalists and fascists, and I see almost no scenario in which groups like that don't flock to Peterson's site in droves.
Yes I would. I would like nothing more than a place to get to the bottom of modern US conservative positions via thoughtful, fact supported conversation. If that is the goal of the platform then I wish them the best of luck.
I like your optimism and although a find it hard to believe I would like it if you're right.
I didn’t want to add a “but....” at the end of my statement, but, yeah I would be pleasantly shocked if this is how it went down.
How long does everyone think it'll take for that place to become a major Alt-Right hangout?
Here's the thing. Freedom of speech isn't meant to protect normal speech. It's for offensive and unpopular speech. I think it's an important freedom for a government to recognize, for the general health of society. Mainly because governments don't have a great track record when it comes to mediating what speech to allow.
But we're not talking about governments, we're talking about private websites. Assuming American jurisdiction for a moment, the 1st Amendment, which says "Congress shall make no law..." doesn't apply in this situation. If I wanted to make a social network restricting all users' posts to the word "buffalo" that's my prerogative.
There are plenty of places online for normal speech. If a site is created with free speech as its core principle and selling point, it's not going to attract people away from their existing communities for normal speech... it's going to attract the other kind. The offensive and unpopular speech, almost exclusively. This is how echo chambers are born. No matter how offensive or unpopular the stuff a person might want to say is, I'd hope they would at least recognize that's not a good recipe for building a healthy community.
I often see this said, but which governments? Any modern Western ones? Because Canada has had hate speech laws on the books since 1970 and IMO our government (and more importantly, our Judiciary) has since done a fine job of upholding those established standards for unacceptable speech while still otherwise respecting our right to free expression, prosecuting offenders reasonably, and not overreaching with them. And I am pretty sure most reasonable people familiar with European hate speech laws would probably say similar.
Not OP. There are plenty of examples in the U.S. with the most prolific example being local school boards deciding that Huck Finn is racist or some other classic isn't racist enough. But perhaps you're thinking Federal government and if so then there is a pretty good example where Larry Flynt's pornographic magazine Hustler had to take their case all the way to the Supreme Court. Then there are less specific examples during WWII and with Japanese internment camps ("freedom to assemble") and going back further we have the Alien and Sedition Act of 1798 which criminalized making false statements about the government.
None of those examples really have anything to do with what Jordan Peterson and his ilk call "free speech" which is a lot more to do about making their voices heard above others and less about what they can/cannot say.
The free market at work, eh? If a baker won't sell to you, find a different baker, and all that... I figured it'd at least be an American that figured out how to profit from the alt-right's speech "suppression."